· Technical Support. All Web hosting companies provide technical support for any problems with publishing your Web site, Web site availability, e-mail, and so forth. However, the type, quality, and availability of this support will vary. Not all companies provide toll-free technical support phone numbers; not all companies provide 24-hour, 7-day-a-week (24/7) technical support.

· Web Server Speed. The speed of a Web server is fairly difficult to ascertain from reading promotional material on a company’s Web site. Nevertheless, to be thorough, you probably want to ask several questions: how much bandwidth is available, how many sites does the Web server host, and how fast is the server? You might also ask for the URLs of other Web sites stored on the same server and then visit those sites.

· Web Server Reliability. Even more important than Web server speed is the reliability of the server. To assess Web server reliability, most people rely on the uptime percentage, which is something that can easily be measured. Most organizations aim for 99.9 percent uptime (roughly 9 hours of downtime a year).